While the Android Market does have it’s fair share of issues, one being piracy of games and apps, it is not often that we get to see the effects first hand. Unfortunately, we are given one situation where piracy is directly damaging one company. Pinyl Studios is close to bankrupcy because their first Android game is pirated so much.
Chess: Battle of the Elements is a great chess game that feature the twist of adding the four elements into it. You can choose which element you want to play as and when you do your pieces and side of the board change to reflect that element. It also features hot seat multiplayer as well as the ability to save your games to resume at a later time. For more information about Chess: Battle of the Elements and all the features it comes with, check out our announcement when it became available on the Android Market.
The developers have come to us to let people know their situation. Due to their game being downloaded up to 10x more illegally than off the Android Market, Pinyl Studios is suffering from some finacial troubles. Enough so to the point that they are on the verge of bankruptcy and enough to write to us and tell us about what is going on. Generally, if you can afford an Android phone, you can afford to buy your games. Regardless if it is this title or any other title out there, pirating a $0.99 game (or in this case $2.99) is pretty sad and if that is the case, people doing that should stick to the free games available instead of hurting developers.
Amazingly enough, people want high quality games available on Android yet some of these same people will turn around and instead of supporting developers who are trying to do exactly that, they go and pirate the game instead. We aren’t saying rush out and buy Chess: Battle of the Elements or that it is the end all of chess games available on Android. We are saying though that piracy does hurt developers. If you see links out there for free games that are normally paid on any of the market sites for Android, report them.
We will be keeping tabs on Pinyl Studios as they battle it out to survive.
Developer Website: Pinyl Studio
